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The author discusses the discovery of two smoking pipe fragments at a Shaker
village of Pleasant Hill, Kentucky. These fragments were discovered at the Shaker washhouses, where the Sisters
washed the clothing for each communal Shaker family. This suggests that smoking was also common among the women
doing hard, tedious laundry work, which challenges the traditionally held gender stereotypes among the Shakers.

Perhaps the greatest problem for archaeologists like me is deciding which
industrial sites are important, because I'm inclined to say "all of them!"
So many mills, mines, and potters' shops left archaeological remains that
it is hard to establish which ones feature examples of rare, older technology
worth preserving, and which are no different from thousands of other industrial
ruins. And is it only the rare, older examples that we should study and
preserve? Some industrialists patterned their mills after a standardized
guidebook, such as Oliver Evans' The Young Mill-wright and Miller's Guide,
whereas other rural craftsmen showed a remarkable amount of ingenuity and
creativity. That is why we need to view every industrial site as unique,
a potential source of useful knowledge. In studying industrial processes,
we want to rediscover what the millers learned through trial and error and
to find out whether their old technology still has value and applicability
in the world today.

Practical concerns determined the siting of many rural industries. Generally
they had to be where fuel and raw materials could be obtained cheaply, where
the labor supply was adequate, and where transportation could carry products
to market. Unfortunately, we are now losing many of these sites of rural
industry to development or “progress,” and so we must decide
how to preserve and study these former ways of life before they are lost
forever. We historical archaeologists have a tremendous opportunity to rediscover
the lost beliefs, values and technologies of rural America by studying the
many abandoned or soon-to-be-demolished industrial sites. Mills, furnaces,
mines, craft shops, canals, fisheries, railroads, and many other industrial
places have potential to provide technological knowledge that is no longer
used in today’s workplaces. Too often industrial processes are forgotten
in the rush to innovate and modernize. The remains and lessons we discover
at industrial sites are helping to reconstruct a recent but poorly known
past.

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The author recounts his his long-term project at a Shaker village, in
Canterbury, New Hampshire, where three Shakers were still alive. After
twenty-five years of recording their productions and industries, the author
notes that the Canterbury Shakers were intrepid industrialists who operated
a wide variety of machinery, and created a mill system that snaked for
several miles.

The author discusses the discovery of two smoking pipe fragments at
a Shaker village of Pleasant Hill, Kentucky. These fragments were discovered
at the Shaker washhouses, where the Sisters washed the clothing for each
communal Shaker family. This suggests that smoking was also common among
the women doing hard, tedious laundry work, which challenges the traditionally
held gender stereotypes among the Shakers.

This section illustrates how industrial archaeology can help dispell
myths about the origins of certain industries, such as gun manufacturing.
In this case, the American System of Manufactures was rumored to have
started at the Eli Whitney Gun Factory. With the help of a team of archaeologists,
it was revealed that Whitney's manufacturing processes were no more innovative
than those of other manufacturers of his day.